1/30As the ending point of the Bandit Run, Road Atlanta at the Year One Experience was awash in a sea of black Trans Ams. Year One's newly unveiled bad boy known as Ban3 paced this lap.

Right after the August issue went to press with our coverage of Year One's new Burt Reynolds-backed Bandit Trans Ams, we got wind of a group of hard-core Smokey and the Bandit devotees preparing to commemorate the anniversary by making the fabled run from Texarkana, Texas, to Atlanta, Georgia. Instead of trying to match Bandit and Snowman and drive it in roughly 14 hours (half of the movie's 28-hour round trip), the idea was a leisurely three-day tour following a hypothetical 665-mile route that kept true to the feel of the movie. And since Coors is now widely available east of the Mississippi, the final stop-rather than the county fair with Big and Little Enos waiting in matching yellow suits for their bootleg beer-was Road Atlanta for a little track time and show-and-shine at the annual Year One Experience. To top it all off, Year One was planning to bring the BAN1 car we featured last month along on the run, then unveil BAN3, the all-out, top-of-the-heap version of the company's Bandit TAs, once everyone arrived at the Year One Experience. It'd be a Pontiac lover's paradise.

We were sold, but since there wasn't time to cobble together our own derelict '79 TA, we had to buy a one-way plane ticket to Texarkana, hoping with any luck to mingle among the Runners, make some friends, and hitchhike our way to Atlanta. Luckily, when we arrived we encountered a friendly bunch who were an eclectic mix of Pontiac and Bandit movie fans from all walks of life, but with one common, unifying desire-to put that hammer down and give it hell with a group of people who share the passion. Will they do it again next year? Who knows, but go to www.motorpia.com/groups/view/id/210/i/bandit_run to lobby for making it an annual deal.

Go to page 3 for a Smokey and the Bandit movie tour and links to some cool promo videos.

Kick ass video of Bubba and Allyson Mize's Solar Gold four-speed '78 TA burning a new set of BFGs to the chords! Watch for HOT ROD associate editor Christopher Campbell about three feet from the spinning TA - the things the staffers do for the perfect shot...

What better way to end the Bandit Run and Trans Am-infested Year One Experience than with a tour of a few of the known movie locations? Despite the fact that the sites were sparsely documented, determined Georgia local Tyler Hambrick was able to track down a few key spots using original Universal Pictures documents he obtained from the Georgia Archives and some diligent frame-by-frame viewing of the movie. Of course thirty years removed from the filming, most of the spots require a little imagination to recognize, but that's part of the fun.